The route General Rogers advocates toward this goal includes a 4 percent real increase in defense spending from each NATO nation through 1990, as well as a rededication to what he calls the ''unity, cohesion, and solidarity'' of the alliance.

He notes that if Warsaw Pact forces attacked from an exercise at which they had mustered 50 divisions, NATO could at best respond with 29 divisions. Lack of conventional strength would severely limit NATO options: Alliance commanders, hard pressed to supply reinforcements rapidly from the US, would quickly have to decide whether to escalate the encounter to the level of theater nuclear weapons or to capitulate.